The third and best album

by this nimble transatlantic jazz band (cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum is American, drummer Harris Eisenstadt is Canadian, and bassist Dominic Lash and pianistAlexander Hawkins, one of the most exciting keyboardists in improvised music, are both British) applies the distinctive musical personalities of first-rate improvisers to a series of detailed, structured compositions written by all four members. The songs veer in and out of postbop but maintain a single cogent sound. Eisenstadt’s multi­partite “Third Convergence,” for example, opens with knotty freebop rambling, then suddenly melts into a gorgeous ballad sequence, where Hawkins injects subtly sour, beautifully lyrical harmonies and Bynum plays a plush, radiant solo—and that’s only halfway through the tune. Moods and styles shift from track to track, but no matter the territory, the musicians dissolve the gap between their jazz foundations and their predilection for abstraction. Few recordings I’ve heard in the past couple years have so vividly collided extended technique and pure-sound exploration with melody and crisp swing. — Peter Margasak

Is the convergence of the Convergence Quartet

its starting point or its goal? Did we begin by converging -and if so from where? Or is converging what we have been doing during our infrequent – but regular – musical encounters the last six years?

Geographically we certainly started out disparate: two of us had to fly across the Atlantic for our first tour, which began with a rehearsal at Radley College outside Oxford, in the south of England. I’m no fan of the English public school system but for a group I’m in to have begun its life playing at the school attended by England’s greatest comedian of the 20th century- Peter Cook- and its best cricket captain in recent years – Andrew Strauss – does, I admit, give me pleasure. Or am I just underlining our divergence with such remarks, emphasising just those aspects of English language and culture (“public school”, “cricket”) that make Americans and Canadians look over the water at us and shrug helplessly?

But perhaps I’m getting distracted by trivialities. Of course geographical convergence is not what we’re talking about – we mean musical convergence, surely. And yes, when we began this project Alex and I certainly hoped that convergence would be the result – although Taylor and Harris are only a few years older than us, they had such a wealth of musical experience under their belts playing with their own groups and with many of our greatest musical heroes (Anthony Braxton, Sam Rivers, Wadada Leo Smith, Cecil Taylor) that before the Convergence Quartet started we could only look back across the pond and daydream wistfully.

If we have been converging musically during the playing we have done, though, where are we going? You can’t converge without heading towards a point, and once you reach that point then all difference is erased, convergence has been achieved, divergence is the only possibility remaining. But what good is that musically? We don’t want to eradicate difference; as improvisers and composers we want to celebrate difference, to make creative use of difference. Friction is productive.

In mathematics, a convergent series is one in which the difference between the successive terms tends to zero. If we start with a half, then add half of a half, then half of a half of a half-and so on for ever-we get 1/2 + 1/4+1/8 + 1/16 +…where the nth term is something so minute that it’s basically not there. Hence the sum of the sequence tends towards 1 as n tends to infinity: it converges on 1. Yet it can’t get there, the sum is always slightly less than 1 (for any finite n).

Merely splitting finer and finer hairs doesn’t seem like a very enticing vision for the future of our quartet. I was, therefore, delighted to discover that not all sequences where the difference between the terms tends to zero necessarily converge. In fact, there is something called – intriguingly for a musican – a “harmonic sequence”, which looks a bit like this:

1 + 1/2 + 1/3 + 1/4 + 1/5 …

Clearly the difference between the terms tends to zero (the difference between one divided by three billion and one divided by three-billion-and-one is very small indeed), and yet the series does not itself converge, it just keeps getting bigger and bigger! Take any finite quantity you like, however big, and eventually – slowly and steadily-the sum of the series will exceed it.

So perhaps the Convergence Quartet is in a sense misnamed – perhaps what the group is really about is coming together ever more closely to produce something that is always expanding. If that were true – and I, for one, think it might be – it would make me very happy indeed. The test of this will of course will be what happens in the future. For now, our third album is evidence of where we’ve got to in the series so far, and we very much hope that you enjoy it. — Dominic Lash

Free music is no simple matter.

It can work marvelously when the chemistry between players is right. Or it can earnestly go along but never quite reach a collective point of convergence. Happily, the group named after such occurrences, the Convergence Quartet, achieves such a state consistently and rewardingly on their album Slow and Steady (No Business NBCD 53).

The band has excellent chemistry. Taylor Ho Bynum (cornet), Alexander Hawkins (piano), Dominic Lash (double bass) and Harris Eisenstadt (drums) each has a hand in the compositions presented (live at the Vortex in England as part of the London Jazz Festival). They are substantial. And each contributes excellent improvisations within a first-tier group dynamic.

I have not explored the music of Alexander Hawkins much at all but he shows himself stylistically well-suited to this outfit, with both a free/new music and a harmonic sensibility as needed. Like the others in this band he is not readily pigeonholed as a follower of x, y, or z, but rather has his own voice.

It’s a beautifully hewn set! No one dominates; everyone dominates. There is tender introspection and hard-edged dynamics side-by-side here. It will make you think. It will let you feel. It will inspire you to a far away musical mindset that energizes and causes reflection. Very much an album to hear. — Grego Applegate Edwards

“Assemble/Melancholy”, the first track, does just that. Four instruments have bits and pieces to say, somewhat fragmentary, with already some ingredients of storytelling, and gradually a kind of boppish rhythm emerges, and so the four instruments start getting aligned in the same direction, somewhat melancholy.

The joy is offered to you by Taylor Ho Bynum on cornet, Alexander Hawkins on piano, Dominic Lash on bass and Harris Eisenstadt on drums, four stellar musicians who’ve been playing together for a number of years now. And the music on this album is sheer joy, offering the listener shifting perspectives on music and its basic material – sound – to create some form of coherence (convergence?) that in its extremes range from Keith Jarrett to Anthony Braxton and beyond, from melodic lyricism to abstract free improvisation.

Simon H. Fell captures it well in the liner notes of the quartet’s first CD, “Live In Oxford” : “The several compositional strategies seem to range from the inscrutable to being perhaps too easily scrutable, and the resulting music includes moments of the sublime, the awkward and the deeply puzzling. At the end of the record, you may even be tempted to ask yourself ‘what was that all about?’” True, this recipe is not new, but the quartet applies it to perfection, playing with the compositions, tossing them around, slowing down rhythms, accelerating, adding shades and seemingly losing threads while at the same time keeping a good ear to the total sound and the direction it all takes.

I will not review each track, but the variety and wealth of material you get is absolutely phenomenal, with twists and turns, from slow to fast-paced moments, rhythmic intricacies and great adventurous escapades. And it sounds great, and rich.

The title piece “Slow And Steady” is an Eisenstadt composition with one of the most beautiful themes I’ve heard in a while – it also features on “Canada Day III” – with odd-metered accompaniment of the rhythm section. A great and sad closing for a fantastic album, one that you will want to listen to many times, as I’ve been doing for the past month.

On May 21st 2013 I enjoyed two sets of blistering free improvisation by the international “supergroup” Tony-Joe Buck Lash comprising Tony Bevan on bass and soprano saxophones, Joe Morris on guitar, Tony Buck on drums and percussion and Dominic Lash on double bass. The gig took place at the Queens Head in Monmouth and the intimate setting made it possible to appreciate fully the details of Buck’s remarkable drumming – it wasn’t always easy to see just what he was doing when I’d seen him with The Necks on a previous occasion. It was also a thrill to witness Bevan blowing hell out of his bass sax, in all my years of gig going I don’t think I’ve ever seen the giant of the saxophone family played before. Joe Morris’ guitar playing was little short of a revelation and Lash, a previous visitor to the venue with Alex Ward’s Predicate was superb at the bottom end, holding it all together either with or without the bow. Congratulations to Lyndon Owen for persuading such an illustrious line up to come to the rural Welsh Borders.

After the performance I spoke to Dominic Lash who kindly gave me a copy of this new live album by The Convergence Quartet for review. The group boosts another international line up with British musicians Lash and Alexander Hawkins (piano) joined by the American Taylor Ho Bynum on cornet and by Canadian drummer Harris Eisenstadt. The group was initially assembled in autumn 2006 for a series of British live appearances, one of which was documented on the album “Live In Oxford” (FMR Records 2007). The quartet struck up an instant rapport and although geographical separation has ensured that playing opportunities have been at a premium the quartet still managed to find their way into the studio to record 2010’s excellent “Song/Dance (Blues)” for the Clean Feed label.

Now comes Convergence Quartet’s third offering, a live recording made at London’s Vortex Jazz Club on November 13th 2011 as part of the London Jazz Festival. The album appears on the NoBusiness label based in Lithuania with Lash announcing himself as being delighted with how the collaboration between band and label has turned out. I’ll admit that NoBusiness is a new label but a glance at the website http://www.nobusinessrecords.com reveals that they are specialists in mainly European free jazz and improv with releases by Evan Parker, Mats Gustafsson, Barry Guy, William Parker and others. They produce both CDs and LPs and the catalogue includes both contemporary material and re-issues. It’s well worth a look.

The Convergence Quartet’s music differs from that of Tony-Joe Buck Lash in that it places a greater emphasis on composition with all four members bringing pieces to the group in all original programme. My one time co-writer Tim Owen (who now runs his own Dalston Sound blog http://www.dalstonsound.wordpress.com) reviewed a performance by the group at The Vortex in May 2009 and commented on how easily they bridge the gap between the avant garde and the mainstream, yes this is free jazz but it’s also sufficiently melodic and appealing to hold the attention of the “casual” listener. It’s certainly not as “difficult” as some of the music under the free jazz/improv banner but that doesn’t mean that it’s lacking in intellectual rigour. I’m with Tim on this one, Convergence Quartet is a band that I can readily enjoy with enough melodic content to hang on to whilst still appreciating the exploratory qualities of the music. I’ll admit that some of the more extreme examples of the free and improv canon do sometimes rather frighten me off.

The performs begins with the Hawkins composition “assemble/melancholy”, a typically enigmatic Hawkins title. The piece begins in abstract fashion, presumably representing the “assemble” part of the title with arco bass rumblings and the occasional interior piano scrape. This develops into a kind of four way discussion centred on the dialogue between Bynum and Hawkins, and a discussion is what it is, animated and intelligent musical conversation that never descends into mere screaming at one another (a problem with rather too much free jazz and improv I find ).

Eistenstadt is a band leader in his own right with a large and impressive back catalogue that includes his acclaimed Canada Day quintet and octet. He begins his piece “Third Convergence” at the drums his colourful polyrhythms artfully punctuated by the rest of the group, yes he’s the featured soloist but that sense of group interaction is always present. Following the percussive fireworks of the introduction the piece abruptly shifts shape to embrace an unexpected mournful lyricism. There’s an almost ECM like sense of space about Bynum’s cornet whispers, Hawkins’ spacious chording and Eisenstadt’s delicately brushed drums. But this is a band that likes to keep listeners on their toes and they soon shade off into something more abstract and assertive before returning to the lyrical mood with a dialogue of fragile beauty between Bynum and Hawkins. Both are wonderfully versatile players as they prove in the next section as the quartet quickly accelerate into full on mode with Bynum’s cornet whinnying impatiently as Hawkins plays jagged block chords with Eistenstadt and Lash providing suitably energetic support. The closing stages mark a return to the impressionistic with Eisenstadt’s eerie cymbal scrapes a distinctive feature. Tim wrote of the band being “impressionistic and fragmented in one piece then propulsive and boisterous in the next”. Here they seem to achieve all of this in the course of a single tune.

Lash’s sturdily plucked bass opens Bynum’s “Remember Raoul” forming the bedrock for the composer’s mournful, muted cornet meditations. Hawkins busily probing piano fills in the spaces between Bynum’s long, melancholy lines and the fluid rhythms of Lash and Eisenstadt. Eventually the pianist is almost left on his own as the piece segues into Lash’s “Piano Part Two”.It’s almost as much a feature for Lash’s remarkable arco bass playing as for the instrument of the title. There are also some extraordinary, almost animalistic sounds from Bynum on the cornet in a piece that simultaneously charms and unsettles. There’s a chilling beauty about this section despite the disturbing nature of the some of the sounds generated by certain members of the quartet.
I have to say that I’m hugely impressed by Bynum’s playing throughout the album on an instrument that is rarely heard in jazz circles these days. He brings something of Kenny Wheeler’s mellifluous elegance to the instrument but is also prepared to toy with certain elements of the avant garde sometimes recalling the Scandinavian trumpet school of Henriksen and Molvaer but also evoking contemporary American trumpet experimenters such as Peter Evans and Nate Woolley. It’s perhaps no coincidence that he’s worked extensively with Anthony Braxton in recent years.

“equals/understand (totem)” just has to be a Hawkins title. The piece is quirky and playful with whinnying cornet and off kilter drumming plus typically idiosyncratic Hawkins pianistics. One minute his jagged runs are reminiscent of Cecil Taylor, Myra Melford or Keith Tippett, the next he’s playing something almost straightahead. It’s all in here.

The Lash composed “Oat Roe + Three by Three” opens with an impressionistic free jazz exchange between Hawkins and Bynum , the cornet player again producing some extraordinary sounds from his instrument. Eisenstadt’s mallet rumbles add to the brooding atmosphere as the piece quietly unfolds. The composer actually appears to play a very minimal role in the proceedings.

By way of contrast Lash’s “The Taff End” is positively jaunty with a scintillating solo from Hawkins plus an equally engaging statement from Hawkins full of vocalised slurs and smears. Lash affords himself an extended solo bass feature before first Eisenstadt and then the rest of the group eventually usher us back to the theme.

The set closes with Eisenstadt’s title track which gradually unfolds in the manner suggested by the title. Hawkins’ gentle piano arpeggios underpin Bynum’s dolorous sounding cornet as the composer provides marvellously understated brushed accompaniment. It’s brief and pithy and its way very beautiful, the kind of subdued cameo that bands often save as an encore. Although this is a live recording the applause has been edited out so it’s not possible to be certain that was actually the case.

For this listener Convergence Quartet seem to strike just the right balance between the composed and the improvised, perfectly straddling the cusp between the accessible and the experimental. Each track is a journey but these are excursions that never seem to lose sight of their destination despite the absorbing diversions along the way. The playing is excellent throughout, Hawkins is a highly distinctive pianist with a well developed personal style and Bynum is little short of a revelation. Meanwhile Lash and Eistenstadt are sympathetic, superbly reactive partners who do all that is required of them – this is a genuine four way musical discussion – but inevitably it’s the melody instruments that draw most of the listener’s attention. On the evidence of this recording (plus their previous excellent output) it would seem that this long running, if intermittent, Trans-Atlantic ensemble still has much more to offer.

The Convergence Quartet is a transatlantic affair involving four mature young composer/improvisors: New York-resident, Canadian Harris Eisenstadt on drums; American Taylor Ho Bynum on cornet and flugelhorn; and British pianist Alexander Hawkins and bassist Dominic Lash.

Recorded live at London’s Vortex Jazz Club on 13 November 2011, Slow and Steady (NoBusiness) is the quartet’s third album since 2007, and captures the group in thoughtful tension. Whereas their last, the studio-recorded Song/Dance (2009, Clean Feed) was an eclectic affair, which tipped the nod to both African and American jazz with judiciously selected covers, here the quartet draw their influences tighter together to forge a mature collective sound.

All four players have strong identities as composers, and all except Ho Bynum contribute equally here (Ho Bynum only splits credits with Lash on the portmanteau composition “Remember Raoul/Piano Part Two”). But where, previously, much of the pleasure in this group’s music came from ideological or methodological frisson, here there’s a more satisfying meld of collective identities.

Tempos are mostly slow to mid-tempo, underlining both the subtlety of the group’s collective restraint and their mutual trust: any bold intervention impacts vividly on the soundfield.

In April 2009, I reviewed an early Convergence concert, also at the Vortex. I described them then as “following in the footsteps of artists such as Dave Brubeck and Anthony Braxton: first-world third-stream composers with one eye on the deeper river of free jazz and African and American traditional music,” adding one small caveat: “their music is evidently still in evolution.” No doubt that’s still true, but as of 2011 the group is clearly operating on a higher level, transcending the talents of its individual members.

The Convergence Quartet is an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary force (just as the album’s title suggests), but they are exemplars of modern jazz, and they are quietly refining the idiom. More important, they are making powerful and deeply affecting music in the process.

Slow and Steady begins with the sputter and hiss of Taylor Ho Bynum’s cornet, a quizzical utterance which invites some playfully curious piano from Alexander Hawkins. Harris Eisenstadt essays some skittering semi-quavers around his cymbals and rims, while Dominic Lash’s bass groans and jabs. After this warm up, the lengthy ‘Third Convergence’ showcases the international quartet’s versatility and lateral thinking. Moving through a range of modes and atmospheres, it begins with Bynum and Hawkins doubling up on a strident Godzilla soundtrack figure, while Eisenstadt burrows deep into the earth’s crust. On the turn of a dime, it becomes a reflective ballad, boasting some gorgeous soloing from Bynum and Hawkins. Lash’s terse bass edges the piece back towards choppier waters, his strings creaking and slapping against the wood like tangled rigging on a storm-tossed ship. Somewhere between Don Cherry’s free-bop and European improv, Slow and Steady is an oblique delight.